This full text paper was peer-reviewed at the direction of IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society prior to the
acceptance and publication.
Autonomous recharge of drones through an induction
based power transfer system
L. Angrisani(1), G. dAlessandro(1), M. DArco(1), V. Paciello(2), A. Pietrosanto(2)
(1)
Department of Information Technology and Electric Engineering
University of Napoli Federico II, via Claudio 21, 80125 Napoli, ITALY
(2)
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno,
Salerno, ITALY
guido.dalessandro@unina.it; vpaciello@unisa.it
Abstract Drones like helicopters use vertical oriented rotors
to lift and navigate forward. Thanks to the use of modern flight
controllers, they often can fly autonomously. Namely, the user can
mark target points on a map to which the helicopter is driven by the
software controller without any other interventions of the user.
Once on the target, the helicopter performs the intended task, such
as landing, catching aerial photos, or releasing loads. But, in order
to be fully autonomous the helicopters should be also capable of
recharging the on board batteries, as it is required to complete long
lasting missions, without requiring any external interventions. A
helicopter equipped with a suitable hardware that allows
autonomous recharge by simply landing on a given platform is
presented. The front-end of the on-board recharging circuit is
capable of linking the time varying induction flow, produced by a
circuit integrated in the landing platform, and converting the power
associated to the magnetic field from AC to DC in order to recharge
the helicopter battery.
Keywordsdrone; autonomous vehicles; battery recharging;
inductive coupling; free-running oscillator; power conversion.
I. INTRODUCTION
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also called drones,
have been being proposed for an increasing number of
applications where measurements and or images have to be
made or taken autonomously from a determined height.
Common factor among all the applications is the need of
determining the right tradeoff between pay load and
endurance, since increasing batteries capacity means reducing
payload. For instance, with about 450 g of payload, a
helicopter can have an autonomous flight endurance of about
twenty minutes. This implies that missions must be shorter
than 15 minutes and at landing a human being must be
available for battery charging if a new take off must have
place.
For various applications instead, aerial vehicles should be
capable of autonomously connecting to a recharging station.
Unfortunately, the most common approaches proposed for
autonomous recharge lack of sufficient reliability: light
vehicles often undergo fails because of the difficulties at
connecting to the recharging station. The fails are due to the
poor capability of the vehicle of precisely landing on the
recharging platform in order to assure the electrical contact of
the pins to the terminals of the on-ground battery recharger.
978-1-4799-1860-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE
Large size copper terminals are deployed to increase the
probability of successful connection, thus facing the risk of
battery terminals short-circuits in the case of wrong landings.
In order to allow more precise landing a suitable platform
featured with a passive centering system has been proposed in
[1] together with an on board vision system that drives the
control system in landing. In any case the power transmission
is entrusted to a galvanic contact between copper terminals. In
the practice it has been experienced that all solutions requiring
electrical contact between the on-board hardware and the
ground source can also fail or undergo temporary breakouts
because of dust or corrosion due to chemicals spoiling the
ground contacts, and mechanical vibrations during the
stopover [2]-[5].
Power transfer systems that allow overcoming the
aforementioned problems and performing battery recharging
without electrical plugging, or any other locked connection to
the energy source are today the focus of attention of many
scientific proposals concerning ground [6] and aerial
unmanned vehicles [7, 8, 9].
The most of these systems exploit coupled circuits to
transmit power within very short distances. The first circuit, in
the following named primary circuit, is installed immediately
beneath the landing pad of the ground platform. It sustains a
time varying magnetic induction flow by means of which the
electrical power is transferred to the user as in an air core
transformer. The other circuit, in the following referred to as
secondary circuit, links the aforementioned flux and retrieves
the electrical power demanded by the load.
It is worth noting, however, that the secondary circuit is
installed on board of the helicopter and represents an
additional weight that could reduce the maximum payload of
the vehicle. As a consequence, the real problem is: how to
optimize the power induction system design? How to obtain
the best tradeoff between maximum payload and easiness in
landing?
Starting from their experience in the field of power
induction systems [11-15] and embedded systems [16-18], the
authors describe hereinafter a system for autonomous recharge
of drones through an induction-based power transfer system.
In the next sections, general design rules for a contactless
recharging system based on induction mechanisms is first
illustrated. Then, the proposed recharging system as well as
the specific solution for its installation on-board of a
helicopter are discussed. Some tests both at the design and
development stage are presented and proper conclusions are
finally drawn.
II. RECHARGING SYSTEM
In order to avoid the need of electrical plugging for
battery recharge, the power transfer system exploits magnetic
induction coupling between a primary circuit integrated in a
landing platform on the ground and a secondary circuit on
board to the helicopter.
Generally, in an induction based power transmission
system the primary circuit produces a time varying magnetic
flux, which is typically attained by injecting an alternate
current into one or more coils. The use of more coils is
typically exploited to increase the power transmission
capability of the system at the expense of the complexity of
the whole architecture. For instance battery recharging stations
could use more primary coils deployed beneath a pad and/or
within vertical walls surrounding the landing zone.
Sometimes, due to complex structures, and/or non-rigid
configurations of the overall system, it is convenient to take
particular care in the design of the primary circuit.
Specifically, it is opportune taking advantage of resonance
conditions, that make the system operate at a natural operation
frequency: the alternate currents rising into the coupled coils
can thus assure even in the presence of an unstable
geometrical configuration and occasional parameters
variations the maximum power transfer.
To this aim, the primary circuit could be a free running
Royer oscillator [10], namely, an oscillator not forced by a
controller to operate at a given frequency but capable of
continually auto-tuning to the resonant frequency of the
system. Such a design choice allows escaping energy losses
caused by changes in the parameters and surrounding
environment, and maximizing the power transfer efficiency
[19]. In fact, in the case of autonomous recharge of drones, the
geometry of the whole system during the recharging
operations is not accurately known, since it depends on the
position in which the helicopter lands, which can also vary in
time due to setbacks [20].
III. LANDING PLATFORM
The ground platform hosts the primary circuit connected
to a virtually everlasting energy source, for example the main
electrical grid.
Actually, the proposed system uses a primary coil, in
which a resonant current originates a magnetic field to excite a
corresponding current in the secondary coil; resonant
conditions are arranged by introducing capacitors in the
circuitry [19]. The primary circuit is directly connected to the
external energy source and exhibits an interface including one
single coil positioned beneath the landing pad of the ground
platform.
The primary circuit is essentially a free-running or
relaxation oscillator, known as Royer oscillator. It is made up
of two symmetrical branches that polarize two power
MOSFET transistors. The drain terminals of the transistors are
connected to a resonant tank, made up of a capacitor and a
coil, while the gate terminals are cross-connected to the
opposite polarizing branches in order to obtain a positive
reaction. Due to the positive reaction oscillating currents and
voltages progressively increase in the tank. To sustain the
oscillations, the adopted coil offers a central tap that is
connected to the supply through a choke inductor. The
inductance of the choke is chosen much greater than that of
the coil forming the resonant tank to escape dangerous peak
currents. At steady state the transistors work in push-pull
mode by switching on and off upon the polarity alternation of
the sinusoidal voltage across the capacitor.
The primary circuit also includes a stabilizer to interface the
Royer oscillator to the DC power supply and a control
network that impedes inrush currents from the power supply
through the choke inductor before the settling of steady state
conditions.
IV. ON BOARD EQUIPMENT
The magnetic flux produced by the primary circuit is
partially concatenated by the coil of the secondary circuit,
which is connected to capacitors to form a resonant structure.
The coil is mounted on board to the helicopter and connected
to the recharging channel of the battery. The connection passes
through a full bridge rectifier complemented with a low pass
anti-ripple filter on the side of the secondary circuit for
adapting the parameters of the electrical power and recharging
the battery. The secondary circuit has to be compliant with
several important requirements related to size, and weight, for
not impeding the regular operations of the vehicle.
The full bridge rectifier can be realized by means of 4 fast
diodes, while the low pass anti-ripple filter by means of an
electrolytic capacitor. Due to the high operation frequency of
the system, ripple effects are easily cancelled by means of a not
expensive low capacitance component.
Often, recharging circuits require a control channel for the
power channel utilized to perform the recharge. In order to
supply the control channel, which is characterized by low
power demand and peak currents, the secondary circuit could
include a programmable Zener diode system. Zener diodes
dissipate low power, offer large input ranges, typically up to
30 V, and make available at the cathode terminal a stable
output voltage, proportional to the output reference voltage of
the Zener system. The output stage of the Zener system is made
up of a diode and a capacitor and can compensate for variations
in the power demands. These variations are inherent in the
regular functioning of the control hardware, as well as for
voltage swells consequent to resonant structures movements,
which could occasionally occur because of an external stimulus
due to wind or mechanical vibrations.
The design of the power channel is different according to
the battery type to be recharged. For instance if it is intended to
recharge Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries, it has to
work as a stable current source.
A viable recharger uses a Darlington transistor polarized by
the injection of a current in the base region.
The DC input to the recharging system can be conditioned
by a voltage regulator. The choice of the appropriate
Fig.1. Layout of the circuit considered for simulations. The stabilized power supply network and the control network that connects the central tap of the primary
coil to the power supply are shown on the left side, respectively top and bottom schemes; the Royer oscillator layout is in the central part of the figure; the
secondary circuit including the front end tank, full bridge rectifier and anti-ripple capacitor is on the right.
configuration to regulate the current intensity, suitable to
perform the recharge operation, depends on the type of NiMH
battery and, specifically, on the capacitance of the internal
accumulators. According to the common rule of thumb it has to
be equal to 10% of the current that can be figured out from the
specified battery capacitance, usually expressed in mAh.
Differently Li-ion batteries, nowadays widely employed in
cell-phones and commonly recharged through a universal serial
bus (USB) connection, require a stable DC voltage and the
capability of managing current intensities up to fractions of
amperes. These requirements can be satisfied by means of a
USB gate adaptor driven by a suitable voltage regulator.
V. PROTOTYPE TESTING
A. Tests at design stage
At design stage several configurations of the recharging
system have been first evaluated from an analytical point of
view and then simulated by means of a design tool (Saber
Sketch).
Concerning the analytical approach, the theoretical value of
the inductance, L, of the primary coil has been calculated
using an in-air single layer model, according to which:
(1)
being a the radius of each turn and h the height of the helical.
It is so possible to select the parallel capacitor that grants the
required resonant frequency. Similarly, for a given geometry
of the secondary coil, which is constrained by the drone
requirements, the inductance value has been calculated using
equation (1) and the parallel capacitor selected so as to tune
the secondary system at the same resonant frequency.
The primary coil adopted by the prototype consists of an
helical with a diameter equal to 30 cm and including N = 4
turns characterized by a cross section equal to 3 mm2. The
analytical calculation estimates an inductance value equal to
8.96 H. The secondary coil is instead characterized by radius
7 cm, cross section 2.5 mm2, and height 1.1 cm, and the
inductance estimate is equal to 4.16 H. The theoretical
estimates have been compatible with the results of inductance
measurements carried out by means of a digital impedance
meter.
By connecting in parallel to the coil a 660 nF capacitor, a
resonant frequency equal to 65.6 kHz is calculated. In order to
tune the secondary circuit at the same frequency a 1.42 F
capacitor is needed.
Concerning the simulations, these have been performed by
means of the aforementioned design tool with reference to the
basic layout briefly described in Section III and illustrated in
detail in Fig. 1. In particular, the simulated system consists in
a stabilized DC power supply, a delay control network which
turns on power after that transient insertion has completed, the
Royer oscillator with the front end primary inductor, and a
coupled circuit including a high frequency rectifier and a
resistive load. The simulations have allowed to highlight the
voltages and current intensities in all the branches of the
circuit, both for the steady state and transient functioning, thus
permitting to check that voltages and currents remain within
the safety operation region of the components selected at
design stage. The voltages and currents intensities during the
steady state functioning of the circuit for the most critical
components are given in Fig. 2, which from top to bottom
show: voltage between gate and source terminals of the
transistor limited by the Zener diode, current in the transistor
 Fig. 2. Voltages and currents intensities during the steady state functioning of the circuit for the most critical components.

and voltage across the drain-source channel, and sinusoidal structures. A dissipative load connected to the secondary coil,
voltage and current in the resonant tank of the primary circuit. in the best case, collects about 20 W.
B. Tests at development stage
Since the UAV can land in several different positions,
characterized by misalignments between the axis of its own
coil and that of the primary coil, a circular coil with a diameter
much larger than that of the secondary coil has been
considered. Thanks to this choice, even in case of relevant
misalignments, the secondary coil is always completely
contained in the area of the primary one. The prototype
mounted and tested is shown in Fig. 3.
The circuitry of the system has been mostly realized according
to the specifications given in the previous subsection. In detail,
the helical has been made up wrapping four times twisted
insulated copper wires, each wire characterized by a cross
section equal to 1.5 mm2. For the other parts of the system, the Fig.3. Prototype mounted and tested at development stage.
components available on the shelf have been used, so that the
values of some components have been slightly different from
VI. SYSTEM INTEGRATION
those considered at design stage. The UAV is a quad-rotor manufactured by AIR DRONE SRL.
For the prototype set up at development stage, measurements The drone allows to install different kind of sensors and
performed by means of a digital impedance-meter, have given processing units up to a maximum suggested payload of 450 g.
for the primary coil a 9.95 H inductance, and a 5 m At maximum payload the drone endurance is limited to 15 min
resistance values, whereas for the secondary coil a 4.01 H using 2x5000 mAh 4s batteries.
and a 25.68 m. The measured frequency has been 60.5 kHz, The drone uses the NAZA-M V2 flight controller and needs
which is almost 10 % less than the one considered at design correct weight balancing to perform at best. The Naza-M V2
stage. This is mostly due to the large uncertainty, almost 20 % has different Built-In Functions: Multiple Autopilot Control
of the low cost capacitors utilized to build the resonant Mode, Enhanced Fail-safe, Low Voltage Protection, S-Bus
Receiver Support, PPM Receiver, Support Independent PMU
Module and 2-axle Gimbal Support.
Both the GPS accuracy and the integrated Intelligent
Orientation Control (IOC) function of the helicopter determine
the precision in reaching the target. In outdoor environments,
the integrated GPS module can be used for a complete
autonomous flight: take off, navigation and landing. This
function allows the possibility of recharging the battery pack
in an autonomous way.
The power consuming in normal condition is about
0.6 W (0.12 A @5 V), and 1.5 W (0.3 A @5 V) in case of
maximum speed. The flight performance are expressed as:
Hovering Accuracy (Gps Mode) about Vertical: 0.8m
Horizontal: 2.5 m; Max Yaw Angular Velocity 200/s; Max
Tilt Angle 35; Ascent/Descent 6 m/s 4.5 m/s.
The secondary circuit of the proposed recharging system is
going to be mounted on board of the Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle shown in Fig. 4. To recharge the battery of the UAV a
DC battery charger is needed. There are different battery and
different charger on the market. The ideal charging method for
LiPo is a combination of the constant current and constant
voltage methods (CC-CV). Initially, the charger finds the
voltage which causes the desired charging current, and slowly
increases the voltage as required to maintain constant current
charging. Once the maximum voltage for the battery is
reached, the charger uses constant voltage charging at this
voltage. When supplied a constant voltage, a LiPo battery
would continue to draw a charging current forever, so a cutout
is needed. Typically, the cutout is forced as the charging
current drops below 1/10 of the maximum current, or 1/5 if
fast charging is required. When the UAV lands on the charger
station, the charger disconnects the battery from UAV and
starts the charging of the battery pack.
Fig.4. The helicopter equipped with the prototype induction based recharge
system.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
The design and realization of a contactless power transfer
system that should permit to improve the reliability of
recharging operations carried out autonomously by a
helicopter has been addressed. A proposal for a ground
electronics and on-board front-end to capture the induction
flow and convert the associated power to recharge the batteries
has been described in detail. The results of experimental tests
on a prototype have been also presented in order to highlight
the efficiency of the power transfer mechanism. Several other
items need further investigation to thoroughly control the
power transmitted to the secondary circuit, especially when it
is required to assure stable controlled profiles to the charging
current.
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